GIM Founding Member & Mod.

The End of Scientific Integrity? Cochrane Collaboration Expels Critic of Big Pharma – 4 Other Board Members Resign

Snip:

Health Impact News has covered the work of Dr. Gøtzsche frequently over the years, as he is an outspoken critic of Big Pharma, referring to them as “organized crime.”

He is author of the book, Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How big pharma has corrupted healthcare.

The Cochrane Collaboration is considered to be the “gold standard” in scientific integrity, but they have come under fire recently for what appears to be biased reviews influenced by the pharmaceutical industry.

Dr. José Baselga, a prominent cancer expert and chief medical officer of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, has resigned amid revelations that he repeatedly failed to disclose millions of dollars in payments from healthcare companies to prestigious medical journals in which he published high-profile research articles. Since these revelations, many have raised concerns that his research, and other research which he has influenced, may not be accurate due to obvious bias.

TL;DR- a renowned cancer expert was paid to make drug and healthcare companies look better/make more money. What we know about cancer may be based more on paid propaganda than true scientific research.

GIM Founding Member & Mod.

How the UK press published hundreds of fake news stories about cancer drugs

Last week the BMJ published an article warning about the dangers of non-drug CAM treatments for cancer headlined: ‘Is cancer fundraising fuelling quackery? (BMJ 2018;362:k3829) Nothing very unusual about that. As the trustee of a small but perfectly formed charity called Yes To Life that’s devoted to providing information about non-drug cancer treatments, I notice such articles, feel briefly irritated and then usually move on.

But this time I paused because the journal also carried another article that not only put the whole quackery allegation a new light but calmly revealed that all the UK national press had been engaging in mass Fake News – telling readers the exact opposite of the truth about the safety and effectiveness of cancer drugs.

Behind its far more anodyne headline: ‘UK newspaper reporting of the NHS Cancer Drugs Fund, 2010 to 2015: a retrospective media analysis’ was a dynamite report that should lead to calls for resignations and hearings by the Commons Public Accounts Committee although it almost certainly won’t.

It does provide an explanation why the ‘quackery’ accusation gets so much support. If you have been regularly told how effective and a breakthrough the latest cancer drugs are, there is little reason to believe that the likes of vitamins or a change of diet could help. They must be a rip-off. It’s only when the true scale of the problems with the drugs become clear that alternatives can be seen as part of the solution.

Fund has been a 1.4 billion pound disaster
First a bit of background. The Cancer Drug Fund was set up by David Cameron’s government in 2010 to make new cancer drugs that had been rejected, or not yet assessed by NICE, available to patients on the NHS. It was wound up in 2015 and naturally, there was a report to find out whether this public health initiative, launched without any evidence that it was safe or beneficial, had been worthwhile.

One of its authors was Professor Richard Sullivan, director of the Institute of Cancer Policy at King’s College, London and senior author on this latest BMJ study. His first report made it very clear that the Fund had been a disaster. It had spent nearly 1.4 Billion pounds on drugs during the five years it had been operating, for virtually no clinical benefit at all.

As last week’s BMJ article says: ‘Many of these drugs did not offer any benefit with respect to prolongation of life or improvement in the quality of life … (there is) …little evidence that patient on the fund benefitted.’

Contrasting the claims of the quackery article with what we now know about the CDF is revealing. It originated with research by a sceptics’ organisation called the ‘Good Thinking Society’ which found that 8 million pounds had been raised by crowdfunding sites for people to have access to CAM cancer treatments not available on the NHS.

Cancer Drug Fund and clear signs of quackery
The Society disapproved of this on several grounds: that the treatments were not backed by evidence, that they ‘may even do harm’ and that they could be exploiting the people donating money. The worry, according to a senior member of the Society, was that these sites had opened a: ‘lucrative revenue stream for cranks, charlatans and conmen who prey on the vulnerable.’

Exactly the same charges could be laid against the CDF. ‘Not backed by evidence’: The setting up of the CDF was not supported by any evidence at all. In fact, its basic idea was to reject any evidence that the drugs were not effective or too expensive and pay for patients to get them anyway. That certainly set up a ‘lucrative revenue stream’.

One of the jobs of NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) is to look at the evidence for the cost-effectiveness and performance of newly licensed drugs to decide if they should be made available on the NHS.

So, the drugs CDF were handing out were ones that had already been rejected as duds or hadn’t yet been assessed. True those not yet assessed would have been licensed by the European Drugs Agency but, as explained below, nearly 50% of the cancer drugs passed by the Agency have no evidence of safety or effectiveness. This may also seem unbelievable but this what an analysis of new drugs by a different team at King’s college discovered last year. (More below)

300 fake news stories on cancer drugs in UK press
After the report on the CDF came out, something remarkable happened – nothing. An authoritative report had found that over a billion pounds had been spent on very expensive cancer drugs for no benefit and yet there was no call for enquiries about who knew what when. Instead, the UK press responded by engaging in a massive fake news operation. They all decided – independently or collectively, who knows? – to cover the report as if it had found that the CDF had been a great success.

Even though the original report in 2017 made it clear that the Fund had been a hugely expensive disaster, the press wrote 382 stories the great majority of which made it seem as if the Fund had been a winner. The BMJ article classified each story according to the main angle it took. The top four most common angles were: The CDF should also be available in Wales and Scotland not just England. It is good but would benefit from more money. It is good and is helping people. It is good but should cover more drugs. Just two of the stories were classified as: The fund is bad because the drugs are ineffective and have nasty side effects.

The study calculated that favourable reports outnumbered the negative three to one, commenting that ‘The drugs lack of effectiveness and range of unpleasant side effects ‘counted for little against human interest stories.’

A possible reason for this misleading and irresponsible coverage is that the CDF was the creation of the press in the first place. Many had run emotive campaigns based around personal stories of patients being denied ‘life saving’ treatment because a certain drug was not recommended by NICE. The government had eventually caved in and set up CDF in direct opposition to NICE which had created precisely to make such tough decisions.

The assumption behind the media campaigns and the CDF was that patients should have access to drugs ‘no matter what the cost or the evidence for benefit’. This makes a mockery of claims that these drugs are all carefully tested for safety and effectiveness before being released.

Drugs licensed with no evidence of effectiveness
In fact, a report that came out a few months after that exposing the CDF revealed that the principle of getting drugs out to the public as fast as possible and regardless of cost was also being followed by the EMA (European Medicine’s Agency).

This investigation, published in the BMJ, into the benefits of 48 cancer drugs licensed in Europe and made available in the UK over a four-year period found that over half (57 per cent) entered the market without evidence of benefit on survival or quality of life. (Availability of evidence of benefits on overall survival and quality of life of cancer drugs approved by European Medicines Agency BMJ 2017;359:j4530)

‘These are the outcomes that matter most to patients and their doctors,’ said Dr Huseyin Naci, Assistant Professor in LSE’s Department of Health Policy and one of the authors of the study. ‘It is remarkable that so few cancer drugs enter the European market without any clear data showing they can have these benefits.’

And the drive for rapid licencing, an aim shared by pharmaceutical companies, was not limited to the EU. ‘Our regulatory system is broken,’ Vinay Prasad, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Oregon Health and Sciences University, told the BMJ. ‘We are approving cancer drugs at a rapid pace, yet few come with good evidence. Their marginal benefits from the rarefied world of randomised trials with selected patients can often be lost when they are used on a much wider range of patients in the real world.’

The wildly unbalanced and misleading media coverage of the benefits of drugs makes it almost impossible for patients and their doctors to make a well-informed assessment of what the best treatments might be. But it wasn’t just the press who were acting as cheerleaders for new drugs.

Can we trust cancer charities to tell the truth?
As Professor Sullivan’s report makes clear: ‘Public organisation including the charitable research funders failed to publicise the shortcomings of the CDF.’ The report doesn’t make this point, but it seems to me that this is a much more serious professional failure. These are the bodies staffed by experts who are supposed to know what is going on. They raise millions of pounds a year from the public, so they can ‘beat cancer’.

The public was badly misled by the CDF and it looks as if there are serious problems with the way cancer drugs are licensed. Yet the big charities failed to speak out. Who benefited from that? Not the patients.

It’s difficult to find a clearer description of what has been going on than the picture painted by the ‘quackery’ article of crowdfunding for CAM treatments.

‘These reports may look like uplifting human interest stories, but they rarely highlight the dubious and pseudoscientific nature of some of the treatments. If the media want to report on medical fundraising stories, they should seek the advice of qualified medical experts.’ Unfortunately, it is difficult to know which medical experts are reliable.

Gold Member

Remember the first flu, about 1917 or so, discovered at that time to be a virus, with that particular little manifestation of not really living but somehow moving and infecting material, first seen (identified) in the 50s with the invention of the electron microscope. Anyone here ever positively identified a virus in person?

This kind of shinola has been going on for a very long time.

Jewel -like the immortal
does not boast of it's length of years
but of the scintillating point of its
moment. - Rabindranath Tagore

Size doesn't count!

Sadly funding is fucking science. Mostly government funding contrary to popular belief. If we are not careful shit like this will drive us into another dark age, the signs are there... it seems to be part of a larger cycle.

BigPharma and its shills won't be happy - The paper disputes recommendations in a number of reviews of statin use and claims those are "based on misleading statistics, exclusion of unsuccessful trials and ignoring numerous contradictory observations".
There is no evidence that high levels of total cholesterol or of "bad" cholesterol cause heart disease, according to a new paper by 17 international physicians based on a review of patient data of almost 1.3 million people.

The authors also say their review shows the use of statins - cholesterol lowering drugs - is "of doubtful benefit" when used as primary prevention of cardiovascular disease.

The authors include Galway-based Prof Sherif Sultan, professor of the International Society for Vascular Surgery; Scottish-based Dr Malcolm Kendrick, author of The Great Cholesterol Con; and Dr David M Diamond, a US-based neuroscientist and cardiovascular disease researcher.

Prof Sultan said millions of people all over the world, including many with no history of heart disease, are taking statins "despite unproven benefits and serious side effects".

He was also concerned that inhibitors to further lower LDL cholesterol (LDL-C), referred to as "bad" cholesterol, are being promoted. The cost of that medication is about €20,000 annually, he said.

"We suggest that clinicians should abandon the use of statins and PCSK-9 inhibitors, and instead identify and target the actual causes of cardiovascular disease."

The paper disputes recommendations in a number of reviews of statin use and claims those are "based on misleading statistics, exclusion of unsuccessful trials and ignoring numerous contradictory observations".

Bad cholesterol?

The paper is published online this week in the Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology journal.

Prof Sultan said it involved a comprehensive review of patient-level data of 1,291,317 individuals across existing trials with a view to answering a number of questions including whether LDL-C causes cardiovascular disease.

The paper says high "bad" cholesterol levels appear to be unrelated to the risk of disease, both in individuals with familial hypercholesterolemia (a genetic disorder characterised by high LDL-C levels) and in the general population, he said.

The authors say their review of the data from existing trials showed the benefit from the use of cholesterol-lowering drugs is "questionable".

They found no association between high total cholesterol and atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and noted four studies had confirmed lack of an association between LDL-C and atherosclerosis.

They found patients with acute myocardial infarction had lower than normal "bad" cholesterol and that healthy individuals with low "bad" cholesterol have a "significantly increased" risk of infectious diseases and cancer.

The "strongest finding" was that elderly people with high LDL-C live the longest, Prof Sultan said.

Disappearing claims

On the issue of whether cholesterol-lowering treatment lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease, the paper said claims of benefit from statin trials have "virtually disappeared" since new regulations introduced in 2005 by health authorities in Europe and the US specified that all trial data had to be made public.

The authors examined whether the risk of disease fell following the use of statins and concluded statin use in 12 European countries between 2000 and 2012 was not associated with reduced mortality.

The hypothesis that high total cholesterol or LDL-C causes atherosclerosis and disease "has been shown to be false", they said.

They conclude that high "bad" cholesterol is beneficial in terms of overall lifespan.

They also conclude statin treatment has many serious side effects and claim that these have been "minimised" by certain trials.

BigPharma and its shills won't be happy - The paper disputes recommendations in a number of reviews of statin use and claims those are "based on misleading statistics, exclusion of unsuccessful trials and ignoring numerous contradictory observations".
There is no evidence that high levels of total cholesterol or of "bad" cholesterol cause heart disease, according to a new paper by 17 international physicians based on a review of patient data of almost 1.3 million people.

The authors also say their review shows the use of statins - cholesterol lowering drugs - is "of doubtful benefit" when used as primary prevention of cardiovascular disease.

The authors include Galway-based Prof Sherif Sultan, professor of the International Society for Vascular Surgery; Scottish-based Dr Malcolm Kendrick, author of The Great Cholesterol Con; and Dr David M Diamond, a US-based neuroscientist and cardiovascular disease researcher.

Prof Sultan said millions of people all over the world, including many with no history of heart disease, are taking statins "despite unproven benefits and serious side effects".

He was also concerned that inhibitors to further lower LDL cholesterol (LDL-C), referred to as "bad" cholesterol, are being promoted. The cost of that medication is about €20,000 annually, he said.

"We suggest that clinicians should abandon the use of statins and PCSK-9 inhibitors, and instead identify and target the actual causes of cardiovascular disease."

The paper disputes recommendations in a number of reviews of statin use and claims those are "based on misleading statistics, exclusion of unsuccessful trials and ignoring numerous contradictory observations".

Bad cholesterol?

The paper is published online this week in the Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology journal.

Prof Sultan said it involved a comprehensive review of patient-level data of 1,291,317 individuals across existing trials with a view to answering a number of questions including whether LDL-C causes cardiovascular disease.

The paper says high "bad" cholesterol levels appear to be unrelated to the risk of disease, both in individuals with familial hypercholesterolemia (a genetic disorder characterised by high LDL-C levels) and in the general population, he said.

The authors say their review of the data from existing trials showed the benefit from the use of cholesterol-lowering drugs is "questionable".

They found no association between high total cholesterol and atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and noted four studies had confirmed lack of an association between LDL-C and atherosclerosis.

They found patients with acute myocardial infarction had lower than normal "bad" cholesterol and that healthy individuals with low "bad" cholesterol have a "significantly increased" risk of infectious diseases and cancer.

The "strongest finding" was that elderly people with high LDL-C live the longest, Prof Sultan said.

Disappearing claims

On the issue of whether cholesterol-lowering treatment lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease, the paper said claims of benefit from statin trials have "virtually disappeared" since new regulations introduced in 2005 by health authorities in Europe and the US specified that all trial data had to be made public.

The authors examined whether the risk of disease fell following the use of statins and concluded statin use in 12 European countries between 2000 and 2012 was not associated with reduced mortality.

The hypothesis that high total cholesterol or LDL-C causes atherosclerosis and disease "has been shown to be false", they said.

They conclude that high "bad" cholesterol is beneficial in terms of overall lifespan.

They also conclude statin treatment has many serious side effects and claim that these have been "minimised" by certain trials.

Hmmmmmmm.... yeah. I seem to remember being told quite some time ago that statistically you actually had a higher probability of a negative outcome when on statins.

I've also been told that the so called "bad cholesterol" comes in two forms, one of which is harmful and one of which is fine. You form one or the other dependant on diet... all links back to refined carbs... so I am told. Seems more credible to me.

GIM Founding Member & Mod.

Hmmmmmmm.... yeah. I seem to remember being told quite some time ago that statistically you actually had a higher probability of a negative outcome when on statins.

I've also been told that the so called "bad cholesterol" comes in two forms, one of which is harmful and one of which is fine. You form one or the other dependant on diet... all links back to refined carbs... so I am told. Seems more credible to me.

Since I was diagnosed with atherosclerosis & CVD I have spent endless hours researching the subject. To date, medical researchers & authorities maintain they do not know what causes heart & vascular diseases... Research indicates that refined carbs are a part & parcel of these diseases including diabetes... another aspect is the ratio of fats to total cholesterol in the blood known as "triglycerides". Evidently there are healthy ratios that act as markers to predict risk of disease... For instance my tri's were at a 4:1 ratio, my Cardio wants a 3:1 ratio which should bring a certain theoretical balance into my cardio vascular systems...

I tossed my statin in the garbage can due to fognitive impairment & the many painful side effects they created.... its really simple & easy to control inflammation & fat ratios in the blood thru diet & exercise. I eat 2 grams of 72% cocoa daily, a bowl of oatmeal every morning with blue berries, raspberries, & walnuts... the oatmeal keeps the gi systems flushed of toxins, the cocao, berries & nuts are natural anti-inflammatories. I fast for 20 hours every other day, using Metamucil to curb the appetite & provide fiber while fasting... this help me maintain proper weight, fat & plaque ratios, etc.. We eat a low carb diet with lots of fresh fruits, berries, nuts, vegetables & white meat poultry... we occasionally dine on lean beef, sushi & every once in while some oriental pork.

I use a 81mg chewable aspirin, 2 to 6 (2000 - 6000 mg) grams of Vitamin C, & a quality multi-vitamin to clean things up... the only pharma I now use is the minimum dosage of .25 Metoprolol a day (.125 in morning & .125 at night).

Most of the research I have performed suggest that genetics plays a major role in our longevity... we can lower risk thru diet & exercise, not smoking or over consuming alcohol & drugs and staying away from exposure, consuming and/or breathing toxic chemicals, etc..., this includes unproven dangerous pharma products. To the dismay of big pharma & Doctors, many blind studies indicate that placebos can & do perform as well or better than some prescribed pharma products... never discount the ability of the body to heal itself when it believes in the placebo being effective... If I didnt know better, it could be called "majic"! Heal yourself via belief & a positive attitude...

Silver Member

Since I was diagnosed with atherosclerosis & CVD I have spent endless hours researching the subject. To date, medical researchers & authorities maintain they do not know what causes heart & vascular diseases... Research indicates that refined carbs are a part & parcel of these diseases including diabetes... another aspect is the ratio of fats to total cholesterol in the blood known as "triglycerides". Evidently there are healthy ratios that act as markers to predict risk of disease... For instance my tri's were at a 4:1 ratio, my Cardio wants a 3:1 ratio which should bring a certain theoretical balance into my cardio vascular systems...

I tossed my statin in the garbage can due to fognitive impairment & the many painful side effects they created.... its really simple & easy to control inflammation & fat ratios in the blood thru diet & exercise. I eat 2 grams of 72% cocoa daily, a bowl of oatmeal every morning with blue berries, raspberries, & walnuts... the oatmeal keeps the gi systems flushed of toxins, the cocao, berries & nuts are natural anti-inflammatories. I fast for 20 hours every other day, using Metamucil to curb the appetite & provide fiber while fasting... this help me maintain proper weight, fat & plaque ratios, etc.. We eat a low carb diet with lots of fresh fruits, berries, nuts, vegetables & white meat poultry... we occasionally dine on lean beef, sushi & every once in while some oriental pork.

I use a 81mg chewable aspirin, 2 to 6 (2000 - 6000 mg) grams of Vitamin C, & a quality multi-vitamin to clean things up... the only pharma I now use is the minimum dosage of .25 Metoprolol a day (.125 in morning & .125 at night).

Most of the research I have performed suggest that genetics plays a major role in our longevity... we can lower risk thru diet & exercise, not smoking or over consuming alcohol & drugs and staying away from exposure, consuming and/or breathing toxic chemicals, etc..., this includes unproven dangerous pharma products. To the dismay of big pharma & Doctors, many blind studies indicate that placebos can & do perform as well or better than some prescribed pharma products... never discount the ability of the body to heal itself when it believes in the placebo being effective... If I didnt know better, it could be called "majic"! Heal yourself via belief & a positive attitude...

Hungers not really a problem, the metamucil is just orange flavored fiber... The goal of fasting is to control the tri ratio while reducing some circulating vascular fats every other day... I am prolly gonna start fasting for a full 24 hours once I am accustomed & acclimated to the 18 - 20 hour fast, prolly work it up to a 30 - 36 hour fast... I'm no longer am concerned with lowering cholesterol, but rather seek to diminish inflammation & tri fats... I noticed that the statins also work as a really good laxative to clear out toxins... the Metamucil is a fair laxative but not near as good as the statin. Gonna try some other products once the Metamucil is gone...

GIM Founding Member & Mod.

And while your at it, throw away most dietary & nutritional research, most of it is bogus... let your body tell you what it needs is prolly the safest means of developing a personal diet.

"Rooting Out Scientific Corruption"

Dr. Brian Wansink recently resigned from his position as Columbia University professor, eating behavior researcher and director of the Cornell “food lab.” A faculty investigation found that he had misreported research data, failed to preserve data and results properly, and employed dubious statistical techniques.

A fellow faculty member accused him of “serious research misconduct: either outright fraud by people in the lab, or such monumental sloppiness that data are entirely disconnected from context.” Among other things, Wansink had used cherry-picked data and multiple statistical analyses to get results that confirmed his hypotheses. His papers were published in peer-reviewed journals and used widely in designing eating and dieting programs, even though other researchers could not reproduce his results.